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British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Neonicitinoids

  • Environmental issues and concerns that affect beekeeping.
Environmental issues and concerns that affect beekeeping.
 #963  by AdamD
 06 Oct 2018, 10:11
There is still pressure from farmers to use neonics on crops. This is a quote from a farmer on the Farming Weekly website.

"Oilseed rape crops were established in good conditions, but as soon as they emerged they were ravaged by this pest.
Only now do we realise what the seed dressing was doing: how crazy is it to be repeatedly spraying broad-spectrum insecticide, killing beneficial insects, knowing that a neonicotinoid alternative would have just targeted the dreaded flea beetle?"

It would appear that neonics times are up - or they will be soon I suspect - I wonder if a study has been done on whether wildlife recovers better after the application of neonic seed dressings and been replaced by spray insecticides compared to if they continue to be used?

My concern is that the banning of neonicitinoids will mean that farmers are just replacing them with a different insect killing chemical so wildlife is no better off.
 #967  by Chrisbarlow
 06 Oct 2018, 10:57
I'm still not convinced neonics are worse than any other insecticide. I agree with the farmer. Replace one chemical that is very specific with multiple that are not.
 #970  by Jim Norfolk
 06 Oct 2018, 12:35
I have heard Professor Dave Goulson's talk on pesticides and it convinced me that we should be using as little as possible. It is available on you tube www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDkpVWzFnK0. One of the most disturbing graphs he shows is of the build up of neonicotinoids in the soil. They do not just kill the target species but contaminate the whole environment. We are wise to assume the precautionary principle here and have a moratorium on their use until there is a clearer understanding of what is going on.

The long term answer has to be to move away from the prophylactic use of pesticides in farming.
 #972  by Chrisbarlow
 06 Oct 2018, 13:35
Here's an interesting article about Dave Goulson on the genetics literacy project website. I feel they will both have their own agendas about neonics though.
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2017 ... h-funders/
 #976  by Jim Norfolk
 06 Oct 2018, 13:57
Ah the old play the man not the ball routine. The whole field is overgrown with fake news I fear, hence the need to tread carefully until the picture clears.
 #980  by NigelP
 06 Oct 2018, 16:55
Was talking to "my farmer" where I take my bees onto his rape fields. He was telling me most of the spraying is while the crops are very young mainly to keep slugs away and flea beetle in control.
2 application of slug pellets and three sprays with insecticides....he didn't know which as he contracts all the spraying out to a company who take care of it all.
Non were needed with a neonic seed coating.

What Goulson fails to address is the persistence in soils of all the other pesticides, organophosphates, pyrethroids etc. It's not just neonics that persist.
 #983  by Alan_A
 06 Oct 2018, 20:45
I'm only in my second year of beekeeping and I'm not an academic so I'm not as knowledgable or experienced as most of the people who contribute to this forum but this subject interests me. I recently read a book by Thor Hansen called the "Nature and Necessity of Bees". I enjoyed the book and it was full of interesting facts and I'm well aware that you shouldn't believe anything you hear/read and only half of what you see but in the book the author claims to have spoken to a scientist who was involved in a survey where they tested samples of honey and beeswax and were able to identify 118 different pesticides, herbicides, fungicides etc., many of which (including DDT) had been banned for years but minute traces were still to be found in the soil which then find their way into plant tissues. This posed two questions: considering the multiple visits pollinators make to flowers could the minute traces of chemicals build up in their systems to a harmful level and could there be problems we are unaware of due to the mixing of many different products. This might all be a load of tosh but if only part of it is true then it still gives cause for concern and as the so called experts can't seem to agree then I think no-one really knows and on that basis we should proceed with caution.
 #984  by Patrick
 06 Oct 2018, 22:04
I have heard similar from an American researcher regarding the multiple residues found in beeswax including chemicals banned decades ago. On the one hand the reality is we now have the equipment to be able to effectively detect chemical presence even when only in near vanishingly small quantities versus the unknown effects of most of these compounds in combination or the combined effect on toxicity. For most of us it's no easy what to make of it.
 #985  by NigelP
 07 Oct 2018, 06:03
Given a summer bees has only about 3 weeks life for foraging does any "damage" by pesticides (shorten life span? ) make a great deal of difference to the hive as a whole?

I've been taking my bees to the rape for several years (preneonic ban and during the ban) and not noticed any obvious differences. The weather has been more influential that anything else